Cutting Through The Crap

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Sunday Soliloquy

Hard not to like Stephen Fry.* In his case, it's not just the English accent, which confers an aura of intellect on anyone. He's witty and an extreme polymath, and his comments above on polytheism mirror what I've written here before: if you look at the world as it is, and feel the need to explain it by invoking deity, it makes a lot more sense to believe there are lots of them, generally screwing around with themselves and us. (And I like his pointing out the inverse relationship, historically, between knowledge and religion.)

Christianity admits the inconsistency and inadequacy of its monotheistic claim by tossing in Satan. As explanations go, it fits a little better with what we see than the idea that there's only one guy in charge, a guy who's all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Has a plan for us all. Knows everything about us before we're born. And since, simply by looking around, it's evident god has way more on his plate than he appears able to handle, we also get saints and guardian angels to clean up his little messes, as needed. Judging on outcomes, though, they must be in over their heads most of the time, too. In any case, other than semantically, this is monotheism the way homeopathy is medicine.

Satan, I guess, does offer believers an explanation, more like an excuse actually, for why there's evil in god's perfect world. The unspoken extrapolation, though, is that his existence also fully negates the view of god as perfect. Either that, or Satan, like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, is actually carrying out their omniscient and omnamorous god's will.

I don't think I've heard anyone argue, though, that Satan is the cause of a child's bone cancer. That, I'd say, pretty much disproves the all3 idea of god. Given that children die of cancer every day, if there is/are god/gods then he/she/they have to be some combination 0f incompetent, inattentive, or uncaring.

1 comment:

Why do people think an English Accents so Intellectual???And why does a Mexican accent remind me of Speedy Gonzalez even if the speaker's a Bored Certified Interventional Radiologist who makes more scrubbing for one of his overpaid procedures than I do in 6 months of signing CRNA's charts?And your right, which is why I go to Synogogue less than Mahmoud Ahmanidejad..And if God's so great howcome he missed Hitler? Castro? or someone really mean and despicable like George Steinbrenner?And if he's such a Surpreme Being shouldn't he be offing people with thunderbolts or atleast locusts instead of an incurable disease??I mean, look at Magic Johnson, 20 years of the Hiv-ie and he's fatter than ever, but all the money in the world can't beat a lightning bolt..

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™